Fonts Embedded in the Coleco BIOS and SmartWRITER ROMs

[MiniRPG]

Just in case others find it useful, I've done a complete breakdown of the default ASCII character sets embedded on the Coleco OS7 and SmartWRITER ROMs.

 

ASCII character 32 of the ColecoVision BIOS can be found at location 5539 (00x15A3h):

 

http://www.segordon.com/coleco_dev/os7-default-char-set.txt

 

ASCII character 0 of the Coleco ADAM SmartWRITER ROM can be found at location 772 (00x0304h):

 

http://www.segordon.com/coleco_dev/smartwriter-default-char-set.txt

Edited May 24, 2017 by MiniRPG

[LoTonah]

Interesting. Dumb question: is there a way to pull in fonts from the alternate ROM set when using SmartBASIC?

[MiniRPG]

Sure. Digital Express created a program for the Coleco ADAM called FontPOWER to do exactly this. You could use the fonts included on the DDP or create your own. The manual includes a brief SmartBASIC program to send the fonts to the VDP. I have it around here somewhere and will post it if I come across it.

[LoTonah]

Good to know. I may have it already, there are a lot of files that I've downloaded and never ever looked at.

[MiniRPG]

I'm still looking around, but I did find a program on page 21 of the October 1986 issues of Nibbles & Bits (by Digital Express) that creates underscore fonts and changes the inverse fonts. Sorry, things are in boxes and I'm still trying to find things. For what it's worth:

 

http://www.segordon.com/coleco_dev/newsletters/nibbles-and-bits-october-1986.pdf

[LoTonah]

Sweet! Appreciated.

[NIAD]

On the ADAM, you can take any FontPower font set saved as a SmartBASIC Binary "H" type file and use the command "BRUN filename" to load it into memory at location 56320. It will remain there in memory and the original font set will still be used/displayed, but once you use the command "CALL 56320", the new font set will instantly be used/displayed.

[Inky]

It would be cool to install these fonts on a Windows PC.